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Any development news for TSM will be posted here! Posts will contain things like recently added features, announcements for new beta versions, what is coming in the near future, as well as general TSM-related news / commentary.

Saturday, August 6, 2011

Upcoming Changes to Anti-Bot Check

Disclaimer: By "upcoming changes" I mean I coded them today but they are in code that is at least a month from being finished and released.

So, since TSM was first created, there has been anti-bot code in some form or another. There are two things that are more obvious than the others.

The first is that only buttons for repetitive actions are named. This includes the "Craft Next", "Post Auction', "Cancel Auctions", etc buttons but not buttons like the auto-mail button or the button to start a post / cancel scan. This is a pretty simple but effective way to prevent complete automation while still allowing legitimate users the convenience of not having to break their mice while posting auctions.

The second obvious anti-bot measure is the anti-bot check that occasionally pops up when you start a scan with the Auctioning module. This requires the user to enter a random number to continue with the scan. This has also been very effective.

I had to break up the wall of text somehow :)

These new changes are a lot more subtle and also a lot more effective. The random-number popup in Auctioning will be going away but trust me when I say I wouldn't take it out unless it was being replaced by something better, which it is. The random-number popup will be replaced by a "test" which is much simpler and less annoying. This test will also appear far less often. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if legitimate users never saw it at all. I had a hard time triggering it myself in testing :).

Just wanted to give you guys a heads-up so when the random-number popup does get removed you're not surprised or worried that I'm taking it easy on botters. Botters, like thieves (yes, I went there), are looking for the easiest way to automate things and I will continue to ensure that TSM is not used for performing illegitimate actions in WOW.

I am aware there are some bots which currently use older versions of TSM or even APM. There isn't much I can do about this except for take comfort in the fact that eventually blizzard will change something to break those versions and they aren't getting any of the awesome new features that are being added.